Winterberry Spark: A Silver Foxes of Westminster Novella (The Silver Foxes of Westminster #2.5)(21)

Martha was right behind her with another bucket of water and one filled with brushes. “And under our own roof.”

“Mrs. Musgrave will have your hide,” Mary muttered as she passed Ruby.

Martha went so far as to spit on her as she passed.

“Oy!” Gil shouted, loud enough to set Faith crying. “Is that any way to treat people?”

“It’s a way to treat the likes of her,” Martha snapped, eyes wide with offense as Gil rounded on her.

“Ruby deserves just as much respect as you do,” Gil went on.

The butterflies in Ruby’s stomach blossomed, in spite of Faith’s crying and Mary’s shout of, “How dare you compare that whore to my sister and me?”

“I dare because I’ve known all of you long enough to know a wolf in sheep’s clothing from a good woman forced to do bad things.”

Hope beyond anything Ruby had dared to cling to rushed through her entire body, but there was so much going on she could barely grasp onto it.

“You’re only saying that because you’ve probably got her bent over a chaise while you roger her silly on a daily basis,” Martha hurled at Gil with a smirk.

“I would never insult Ruby that way,” Gil started to defend her.

The entire confrontation was cut abruptly short as Mr. Noakes stormed into the narrow hall, bellowing, “What is the meaning of this disturbance?”

“Sorry, sir, sorry.” Mary and Martha attempted curtsies, water sloshing out of their buckets. They rushed out into the main part of the house, leaving Gil and Ruby to face Mr. Noakes’s wrath.

“You,” Mr. Noakes began, glaring at Ruby.

“Ruby didn’t start it, sir,” Gil insisted. “She was provoked.”

Mr. Noakes turned to him, his bushy brows shooting up to his hairline. “You, of all people, should know better than to get involved in the petty arguments of the lower staff, sir. Particularly a piece such as this.” He jerked his head toward Ruby.

Gil’s face splotched so red that, combined with his ginger hair, he looked as though he might ignite. “Ruby is not a piece, sir,” he said, addressing the butler more as his equal, or even his inferior. “She has been maligned unjustly and forced into an untenable position.”

“Her position is most certainly untenable by my accounts,” Mr. Noakes said. “It would already have been terminated if it were up to me.”

Gil opened his mouth to argue, but Ruby stopped him with a hand on his arm. She turned to Mr. Noakes. “I’m terribly sorry, sir. It won’t happen again.”

“It most certainly will not,” Mr. Noakes growled.

Ruby glanced warily to Gil, who still looked as though he had enough vinegar in him to take on the world, then curtsied to Mr. Noakes and rushed on, down out of the hall, down the stairs, and into the downstairs hall.

Faith was still fussing, which made it next to impossible to escape into a quiet corner without being noticed. She was hungry as well as upset by the confrontation, but when Ruby slipped into the servant’s hall, sat on a stool in the corner, and started adjusting her blouse to nurse, she drew more attention than she intended to.

“Don’t think you’re going to tempt me down a wicked path by doing that here,” Ben, the head footman, said, rising from the other end of the table so fast that he nearly knocked over the mug of coffee he’d been enjoying.

“I wasn’t—” Ruby let out a breath of frustration as Ben charged out of the room, motioning for Tad, the newest footman, to leave with him before she could explain.

Worse still, Robby, the other footman, rose from where he’d been sitting across from Ben and strode toward her, a hungry smirk twisting his lips. “Don’t mind him, love,” he said leaning his backside against the end of the table and facing her. “Go on.” He nodded to her chest.

“I’m feeding my daughter.” Ruby stared back at him with a look of defiance.

“Yeah, I just bet you are,” he said with a salacious purr in his voice. “Go on and show me those titties.” He rubbed a hand across the front of his livery trousers.

Ruby hissed out an impatient breath and stood. With a final glare for Robby and a disgusted sneer, she marched out of the room.

Faith continued to cry, which took some of the fire out of her exit.

“It’s all right. It’s all right, love. We’ll find a quiet spot to gather our thoughts.”

But it seemed as though everywhere Ruby went in the house, someone was there to glare at her, turn up their nose, chase her away, or, like Robby, watch her with unwelcome interest. In the end, the only thing she could think of to get a moment’s peace was to don her coat and winter things and to leave the house.

She passed Edward Croydon’s carriage rolling up the drive as she fled the house. All the more reason to find someplace quiet. She debated visiting Clara at the vicarage, but what she craved more than anything was silence, a space to breathe without being disturbed.

The perfect spot popped to her mind as she started down to the river. Ada had told her about the cottage where James’s birth mother had lived, on the corner of Winterberry Park’s grounds, months ago. It was maintained every so often, but kept locked up and empty most of the time. But there was a key hidden under a rock by the front door. Few people knew about it, which made it the perfect place for Ruby to have a moment’s peace. She hoped that Mr. Croydon would understand, if she happened to be caught, but seeing as all she needed was a few moments of her own, she didn’t think being caught was likely.